October weekends will be haunting, horrifying and hair-raising as Legend presents a premiere-packed month of must-see movies, headed up by the Channel premiere of The Devil-Ship Pirates on the 1st. This rare Hammer swashbuckler, stars Christopher Lee as Captain Robeles, a Spanish privateer in charge of the galleon ‘Diablo’. When he realises that Drake has won the battle of Armada, Robeles escapes with his cut-throat crew to a lonely inlet on the Cornish coast. He manages to make the villagers believe that Drake has been defeated and he and his men begin to terrorize the locals. Another channel premiere is on the 28th, Darren Lynn Bousman’s twisted St. Agatha. Pushing the boundaries of “nunsploitation” the movie is set in 1950s Georgia, where a pregnant woman on the run from the police, seeks refuge in a desolate convent, only to be met with an unsettling and horrendous evil waiting on the other side.
Xavier Gens’ beautiful and dark Cold Skin on the 31st takes us to the edge of the Antarctic circle, where a steamship is approaching a desolate island. On board is a young man, poised to take up the post of weather observer, to live in solitude far from civilization. But on shore he finds no trace of the man he has been sent to replace, just a deranged brute in the lighthouse who has witnessed a horror he refuses to name. Then night begins to fall… On the 8th the stirring action thriller Boiling Point, starring Wesley Snipes and Dennis Hopper comes to Legend.Making money is to print it. That’s why everyone wants to get in on the act. As the “money men” blow away their rivals, they’re sending smoke signals out to the cops. Cornered in a hotel stake-out, the mobsters have to choose between rubbing out their biggest rival and saving their own skins. The movie also stars Viggo Mortensen.
There’s are also a first time showing for action thriller Mother Lode on the 29th, directed by and starring Charlton Heston. A couple of adventurers go into the wilds of British Columbia in search of a lost colleague, but when their plane crashes they find themselves at the mercy of a crazy miner who has lived in isolation searching the mountain caves for a chamber of long lost gold. Kim Basinger stars. Also new to Legend is the first big screen outing of a TV classic, Sweeny! on the 15th. When one of his informants is murdered, Detective Inspector Jack Regan (John Thaw) is drawn into a deadly political game. He is soon a marked man and, after being framed, is suspended from duty. This doesn’t stop him and Detective Sergeant Carter (Dennis Waterman) searching for the truth. If you fancy a white-knuckle ride then Vehicle 19 on the 22nd is for you. A parolee unwittingly gets in the wrong rental car at Johannesburg airport with terrifying consequences. He soon realises that not only is he a stranger in inhospitable surroundings, but is the target of an entire police force that will use any means necessary to stop him and the tied-up female passenger he discovers in the back of the vehicle.
Plus, there are two channel premieres which are heading up the popular Vintage Vault strand. Nightmarish chiller Fiend Without A Face on the 23rd concerns a scientist whose thoughts materialise as an army of invisible brain-shaped monsters (complete with spinal-cord tails!) who terrorize an American military base in this nightmarish chiller.This independently made British black-and-white cult classic was directed by Arthur Crabtree and stars Marshall Thompson, Kynaston Reeves, Michael Balfour, and Kim Parker. Then on the 30th the blood-thirsty First Man Into Space. Brash U.S. Navy test pilot, Lieutenant Dan Prescott, hungry for fame, rockets himself beyond Earth’s atmosphere on test flight Y-13, only to become encrusted with cosmic dust and return to earth as a blood-drinking monster. Directed by Robert Day, it stars Marshall Thompson, Marla Landi, Bill Edwards, and Robert Ayres.
The vault is unlocked on Sunday October 2nd with subterranean monster thriller The Mole People. This is paired with Nathan Juran’s Ray Harryhausen-inspired 20 Million Miles To Earth. The following Sundays include the beastly mutant classic The Deadly Mantis, Fred F. Sears’ saucer-invading caper Earth Vs The Flying Saucers, spell-binding horror fantasy The Abominable Snowman, The Monolith Monsters, in which the world is attacked by thirsty giant crystals, the brilliant Hammer horror, The Curse Of Frankenstein (1957) and the hypnotically sensual Dracula (1958).
And the second season of hit series Knight Rider, in which Michael, K.I.T.T. and gang return for more roadside adventures, has its channel premiere.